


achillea millefolium

by keishn



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Blood, Body Horror, Experimental Narrative Flow, Experimental Style, Floriography, Graphic Description, Hanahaki Disease, Language of Flowers, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13787739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keishn/pseuds/keishn
Summary: "I'll be right back," Keiji says, stepping backward; coughs tasting of rust and leaves and leaves and rust.





	achillea millefolium

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to karinne ([tumblr](http://yahabinch.tumblr.com/) / [ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/armyofskanks)) for reading this over for me!

Keiji is sitting at his desk, staring out the window at the cloudy sky, the wet ground, the flecks of rain drizzling down. It's nearly lunch, he thinks, as the tick-tick-ticking of the hands on the clock echo against his eardrums, drowning out his teacher's voice. He looks at a cherry tree, with flowers blooming in the early spring, trunk dark-damp-dark and

his classmate sitting to his right snaps her textbook closed signaling high noon. Only moments later he hears the familiar drawn syllables of his name "Aka-a-a-a-ashi," surging from the hallway beyond the doorframe. Bokuto-san is there, smiling bright-dazzling-bright now

the organs in his chest constrict and he coughs and it tastes like leaves and rust.

# 

"Akaashi, you've been coughing a lot today," Bokuto-san says to him in the locker room. "Are you catching a cold?"

"I'm fine," he says.

The gray-cold-gray metal of the locker door shuts, the echo louder than usual. Bokuto-san shuts his own locker, too. The gray-white-gray hair bounces as his head swivels, now, and he looks to Keiji, with white eyebrows drawing together, gold-honey-gold eyes searching his setter's face. Bokuto-san presses the back of his hand against his forehead and

"I'll be right back," Keiji says, stepping backward; coughs tasting of rust and leaves and leaves and rust.

# 

In the bathroom he sits with his back pressing against the gritty plastic of the light-gray stall door— bottoms of his feet flat against the ground, elbows against his knees, palms holding his forehead. The bottom of his lungs feel tight and

he lurches forward as his ribcage constricts; he vomits clear-white-clear into the toilet. Clear-white-clear. Clear-white-clear. When it's over he wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and

Keiji glances down at the toilet as he flushes it, white petals swirling with the water.

# 

"Hanahaki Disease," the doctor tells him. "Surgery is required to remove the plant."

Keiji looks at slim-fingered hands in his lap and thinks of white-gray-white hair, honey-gold-honey eyes, dazzling-bright-dazzling smile. He looks back up at the projection of his x-ray results of the plant growing in his chest: clusters of small flowers between his ribs, branching stems wrapping around his lungs.

"It seems to be progressing quickly— more quickly than usual," the doctor says.

"Okay."

"You don't have to decide right away. You can take a day to think it over."

Keiji shifts and the white-scratchy-white paper covering the mint-plastic-mint cushion of the bench tears. He doesn't look away from the x-ray image and he tries not to think of gold-honey-gold, of bright-dazzling-bright, of gray-white-gray now

when he says, "I'll schedule the surgery."

 #

He wakes and there's blood-mucus-blood, white-red-white. Standing up, vision blurry, he steadies himself against the wall as he makes his way to the bathroom to spit blood-soaked petals into the sink. They come out together now

five petals, white— dyed red— and drooping, stigma and anther clustered messily at the center of the petals. This plant is inside of him, he thinks staring at it in the sink.

"I love him," he says. God, how he loves him.

He wipes the full-bloom flowers out of the sink with a tissue and throws them in the trash.

#

The afternoon before his surgery, he sits with the team as Bokuto stands in front of them with hands on hips, smiling wide, telling them about his plans for their practice today and

his chest and abdominal muscles convulse as the flowers come out of his mouth, awful hacking sounds coming with them as the harsh, green stems catch in his throat and now

there's blood and white petals on the floor. The reflection of the fluorescent lights off the wooden floorboards obscure as a shadow steps over the petals, the blood, the mess he's made now

a hand clasps his shoulder and someone is crouched next to him and he smells the deodorant Bokuto-san has used since the first time Keiji found himself in the locker room. "Akaashi," a voice— his voice, his voice— whispers. Keiji cannot look at him, not now

he raises to his feet, edges of his vision darkening, and stumbles out of the room ignoring the calls of the coach of his teammates of

Bokuto-san snaking an arm around his back fingers gripping into Keiji's side and

he's going to die with mucus-blood-mucus covered petals in his mouth and blood-mucus-blood covered stems slicing the back of his throat. He's going to die with blood-soaked, full-bloom flowers down his jersey. Bokuto-san is speaking to him in a frantic tone but Keiji cannot focus on the words he says; it's all he can do to hold back another bout of clusters of flowers spurting out of him.

"You need to leave," he says in the clubroom. "Send someone else."

Bokuto-san's honey-gold-honey eyes look betrayed and he says to Keiji, "You're dying."

And Keiji says nothing.

"You're dying and you didn't tell me," Bokuto says, still looking at him, gold-honey-gold, gray-white-gray, hurt-confused-hurt now

he says, "I'm getting surgery." He says, "Tomorrow."

"Did the person you love turn you down?" Bokuto asks, honey-gold-honey eyes narrowing and

Keiji tries to shake his head but a cough catches in his throat and he hacks a few times as the flowers escape from his mouth. Bokuto-san's fingers are on his back now, rubbing circles now

he coughs up more flowers.

He says, "It's better this way."

#

He smells rubbing alcohol. Peeling his eyes open he sees the bright lights above him. He's shivering, now

he hears someone say, "It's the shock, get him a blanket."

#

The second time he wakes he's in a small room on a cot and a doctor explains his post-surgery treatments mechanically and

there's a plant in a clear plastic cup on the windowsill, a green stem connecting branches of white, feathery flowers, clusters of anther and stigma in the middle. He stares at it until a nurse comes in and she says to him, "Yarrow."

She says to him, "I read somewhere that they mean everlasting love."

Keiji's breathing doesn't change, his lungs don't ache, his heart doesn't squeeze. He looks away from the flowers and

he says, "Oh." 

#

"If you relapse," his post-surgery nurse tells him, "recovering from the second surgery will be much more difficult."

#

Two weeks later he returns to school and it will be another six until he can play volleyball, maybe longer; the doctors aren't sure. He doesn't feel much of anything at the thought of seeing Bokuto-san at lunch, at practice. He doesn't feel much of anything.

Keiji is sitting at his desk, staring out the window at the cloudy sky, the wet ground, the flecks of rain drizzling down. It's nearly lunch, he thinks, as the tick-tick-ticking of the hands on the clock echo against his eardrums, drowning out his teacher's voice. He looks at a cherry tree, with flowers blooming in the early spring, trunk dark-damp-dark and

his classmate sitting to his right snaps her textbook closed signaling high noon. Only moments later he hears the familiar drawn syllables of his name "Aka-a-a-a-ashi," surging from the hallway beyond the doorframe. Bokuto-san is there, smiling bright-dazzling-bright now

his organs don't constrict in his chest and he doesn't taste plants and rust.

Bokuto-san coughs into his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> if it makes you feel better, i hurt myself writing this.


End file.
